SEO 101: How to Boost Your Online Presence FAST!

The internet has revolutionized how we do business, and in today’s world, everything is digitalized including businesses and service delivery. Businesses have realized how important online presence is and it can be defined as how easy it is to locate a brand, product, or company online.

Having an online presence gives your business or company unlimited reach and thus making more sales which means more profit for your business. The million-dollar question is how can you make your business grow its internet market and attract potential customers to your website?  This guide explains how you can improve your company’s online presence.

Get a modern, attractive site

For you to show up online, you need to have a website. Among the very first places that people go to find more about your products is on your website. If you don’t know how to make a website, you can use the services of web design professionals who will use their expertise to ensure you get a website that represents your brand. Your official website allows you to display your brand via videos, texts, images, and colors, you can also display your contact information on your website which people can use to find you. Seeing how important your website is, you need to give it a beautiful and modern look while remaining professional. It should not only appeal to the pain points of your buyer’s persona but should provide a solution to their problems.

Build an email list

This is an effective way to help you increase your online presence since it allows you to interact with customers and generates leads. If you don’t have a website yet you can use maintenance plugins and encourage people to sign up for your email list. Secondly, you can create gated content that users can receive only when they sign up for your email list. Also, on your social media pages or website, you can add a call-to-action (CTA) which can help you with promoting your email newsletter. A newsletter enables you to collect leads and shows the customers who are interested in your product.

Boost your site’s search engine optimization strategy

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an effective way to improve your online presence. It helps attract traffic to your website and improves your brand’s presence on online platforms. Using SEO customers are more likely to find your website when they are searching texts or words that are closely related to your business. Mastering SEO will help your site to show up online.

The two categories of SEO are on-site SEO and off-site SEO

• On-site SEO. This comprises content that has usage of keywords, internal and external links, as well as content that matches what your audience is searching which makes your website rank higher.
• Off-site SEO. This involves the technical side of things of your website such as setting up your site correctly, ensuring it has a simple URL structuring, it loads quickly, and also building trust for your site with backlinks. These don’t have to be separate strategies, but should work in tandem: How on-page and off-page SEO can work together.

Be active online

To build your online presence, you must be active by regularly posting on your website and social media accounts. If you are always busy, you can assign someone to manage your social media accounts, this way you will remain active and also engage with your followers. Being active online entails talking about things that everyone in your industry is after, engaging in such conversations will give you a huge following which is good for your brand.

Have a strong social media presence

In this day and age, being on social media is a must as everyone you know is already there. It is estimated that 3.2 billion people are on social media that is Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This is a huge number and imagines the good it would do to your company by being online.

These platforms provide a great avenue for reaching your targeted audience regardless of the platform that they are in. Being on social media instills trust, a company that is not on any of these platforms then doesn’t exist. Having an online presence ensures credibility by giving your brand a platform where you can showcase your products and this is the first place where potential customers research your brand.

Produce content

Producing engaging content that adds value to your customers is a top way of attracting more online presence. Engaging content can help you introduce your brand, character, and personality to the rest of the world as well as build your online presence.

Do your research and know the sites that your customers are active on and later brainstorm them with content. With YouTube, you can use videos. While on Facebook and Instagram, you can use photos and captions that will engage with your customers.

Adopt new social media forums

Become an early adopter of new social media platforms and other web technologies. The good thing about embracing new technologies is that there is very minimal competition on these sites, therefore you will use them to your advantage to reach your intended audience.

New social media platforms have a higher engagement with their users, thus your brand will easily get noticed. Also, you will attract new users from these new social media sites and this will make your brand more visible.

Experiment with online advertising

Online advertising gives you a faster and more effective way to build an online presence. Through online advertising, you build awareness and this makes your brand to be more visible online. There are numerous platforms where you can advertise your brand on and they include Yahoo, Google, Bing, and Opera Mini. There is social media advertising with the likes of Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube which provide plenty of advertising options.

Develop relationships with other companies

Developing relationships with people that are in the same industry is a great way to improve your online presence. Through sharing passions, interests, and hobbies you can establish connections that will come to bear fruits in the future. Be social by engaging with podcasters and bloggers by asking them to feature your business. Get yourself out there and accept any offers that will have you appear on other peoples’ sites. Building relationships with other companies helps your brand to appear more online.

Make room for diversity

2020 saw the beginning of inclusivity and antiracism movements and incorporating diversity in your marketing strategy has become very important. It is in human nature for people to be attracted to materials that represent them whether written or visual materials. To improve your online presence, market your brand with inclusivity at the core of your marketing strategies. By including and representing a diverse range of people in your brand, it will enable you to get more noticed as you are demonstrating social responsibility. 

Analyze your results

After you get started with implementing strategies and tactics for building your online presence, it is essential to analyze the results. Test your strategies, so that you’ll know which one works and what doesn’t work. Know the metrics that you will use to analyze your results. Google will help with knowing if your SEO is generating leads or if your email list is building more subscriptions. Improving brand awareness takes a few months. Remember that these are long-term goals and you need to be patient with your work.

Use influencers to promote your brand

Influencers are popular figures who have a wide following and you can market your brand to their massive following. Many people rely on trust recommendations so that they can buy products. Influencers allow brands to organically earn the trust of individuals. When you market your products through an influencer, you appeal to their huge following and there is a high possibility that your product or services will be purchased by their fans. Influencer marketing talks about your brand giving you wide exposure and more people will go online to check out your brand building up your online presence.

Be competitive

To remain ahead of others while improving your online presence you need to be competitive. Do your little research on what your competitors are doing and determine whether it will work as a strategy for your business. If there is a gap that your competitors are not filling or certain information that customers are lacking provide them with the information. When you research about your competitors you get ideas and strategies and this serves as a learning curve for your brand. The only way you can compete with your competitors is by learning what they are doing and this is good for your business.

Create value

Before you make the revenues you need to create value and be customer-oriented. You can create value by providing educational, free content which will be helpful to your customers and increase your online presence. A great way to creating value is by giving advice, you can achieve this by responding to their comments or guest posting. Answer any questions that your customers might have and this will make them feel that your brand is customer-centric.

Be relevant

Being relevant is knowing where your audience is and producing content that they will relate to. If your audience is on Facebook, focus all your efforts on Facebook and not on a social media site that they are not active in. However, you should use a strategy that will promote their presence on a social media site that they are not most active on so that you can balance your presence. By being relevant and showing up where your audience is, you will improve on your online presence and make it grow fast.

Why You Need an Online Presence

Web Design is a crucial element to helping you build a strong online presence and below are some of the benefits of having a strong online presence.

You get discovered. When you have an online presence it makes it easier for customers who do not know your brand to discover you, regardless of whether they are searching for what you have to offer. Getting discovered by ideal customers creates brands awareness which is good for any business.

Saves money. All the platforms that come with building your online presence come with data that tells you what is working and what is not working. By tracking this data you can allocate a budget so that you can strengthen your weaknesses and maintain your strengths.

Perfects your buyer journey. The first step of shopping starts online where potential customers lookup for the products they want to buy online. Having a strong online presence will make your customers have a smooth shopping experience since you can help them out in case of any difficulties and this will give them an ideal shopping experience.

Improves credibility. Before a customer makes a purchase, they research your business online to determine whether it is credible or not. Customers dismiss businesses that do not share their information online across various social media platforms. 

Markets your business. A strong online presence allows you to market your business 24/7 since more people can discover you, they will learn more about you, engage with you and even reach out when they need your products or services. 

Earn Google’s trust. When Google ranks you it takes into account your website and social media platforms. You are ranked based on how consistent you are and the assets you have on the web, thus the more social media sites you have the better your Google rankings will be.

The Bottomline

The internet is a marketplace that offers limitless opportunities for your business. Thus, building an online presence will have your business be more discoverable, build your reputation, improve brand awareness and eventually make more sales. The above marketing strategies will help increase your online presence which requires effort, time, and energy. When building an online presence, you can do it yourself or you can implore the services of professionals who will use their expertise to give what you need. Whichever works for you, build an online presence so that you grow your business.